Sniffling, the dying man replied, “You can have my pregnant goat.”
The witch doctor shook his head.
“I’d rather get your daughter, Dimples, pregnant.”
Dimples was fourteen years old and painfully attractive. The witch doctor had wanted her for a long time, despite having wives in all eight directions of the wind. Her father was powerless—everyone knew that the man’s will could not be refused, because he was invincible to weapons and full of deception, trickery, and witchcraft. All Dimples’s father could do was stall for time, fending him off:
“She’s just an innocent child.”
But now he would have to surrender her, his child, with those fetching dimples in her plump cheeks, to this witch doctor. If he didn’t, that hellish venom would surely wrench his soul from his body, which would then collapse like a dropped sarong. The man wept from the agony of dying and the anguish of sealing his daughter’s fate.
“Take the girl,” he said in defeat.
The witch doctor smiled, his parting lips releasing a rotten stench. But he still didn’t cure the dying man. Instead he stood up, turned, and went back into the house. The man let out strangled wails, alternately calling for the witch doctor and begging for God’s mercy. Soon, the witch doctor reappeared carrying something.
“Repeat what you said in front of this,” he said, holding out the Holy Book.
The dying man knew this witch doctor had never read the Holy Book and probably had barely ever even touched it. But he himself respected it, never carried it carelessly, made sure to always place it above his head, kissed its cover, opened its pages gently, and read it only with a clean body and a pure heart. Gasping for breath, he looked at this witch doctor.
“On this Holy Book,” he rasped, “I give you my daughter, Dimples, to be your wife.”
That rotten stench came again. The witch doctor lifted up the lower half of that bruised leg, and its owner wailed louder. He untied the rag tourniquet, leaving a trace of chalky almost-dead flesh, and retied it higher up the leg. He rubbed the anti-venom stone on the bite wound as the dying man howled. The dogs at the far end of village howled in reply. The witch doctor rubbed the stone again, reciting mantras and spells. The dying man could hardly bear it, squealing into the soupy dawn, until his voice was gone, swallowed by unconsciousness.
When he came to, the man found himself in his own bedroom. Feeling wretched and full of sin, he called Dimples and told her, “Child, you are to be married to that rotten stinking witch doctor.”
She still remembered when that man brought her to his house, introduced her to the woman and those two snot-nosed kids. She resisted at first, but he dragged her along the village road, one surreal afternoon, as the shepherd boys and the men plowing the rice fields gaped after them. She had never been to that house before, but ever since the day that man had appeared and tried to grope and grab her while she was finishing her bath at the spring, Dimples knew her life would end in his den of witchcraft.
In fact, she felt sure that the whole tragedy of the poisonous snake was nothing more than that man’s trickery. It was probably a demon snake that made a pact with him to conquer the spring’s caretaker, and all that anti-venom rock business was nothing but a black magic ruse. But, just like her father, she respected all vows taken on the Holy Book, and so she finally let her young body be led away to see her future home.
The woman and the two snot-nosed kids were waiting for them on the veranda, standing as straight and stiff as spikes driven into the ground. She felt uncomfortable, looking at their accusatory eyes. Despite their harsh and cold demeanor, Dimples offered her sweet smile. A blush rose on her face, and the twin valleys in her cheeks curved tensely. They know this smile is fake, she thought.
The man said her name, introducing her briefly and making his small talk loud so that everyone in the house and surrounding neighborhood would get to know her. But she wasn’t sure that woman and her two kids wanted to even hear her name uttered, let alone commit it to memory.
She knelt before the woman, took her hand and sniffed deeply, pressing it to her lips. That hand was as cold as death. She approached the oldest child, ruffled his hair and kissed both his cheeks. The boy was silent and didn’t budge. The little one even tried to shrug her off when she touched him, embraced him, and gently forced him to kiss both her cheeks. It all felt like a cheap charade. Her fear turned into a creeping sadness. She couldn’t look at those accusatory faces anymore.
Once she was home, their faces haunted her and filled her with panic. She spent sleepless nights sitting at the window, wishing she could steal an owl’s wings and fly away to the moon.
Her father now forbade Dimples to leave the house after dark, because she would soon be a bride. But one night, from her spot at the window, she caught sight of four youths at the security post down at the end of the street. They were sitting in a circle in their open-air hut, playing cards and dominos under the light of a small lantern. The fumes of white arak wine floated over their heads, carried up to Dimples by the night breeze. An idea came to her. Now she knew how to free herself from that stinky old man full of spells.
Dimples snuck out of the house and came to stand next to the security post hut. The four youths stopped throwing down their cards and drinking wine to look questioningly at the girl. It was a chilly early morning, and everyone in the village was burrowed under their blankets except for them.
“Follow me,” said Dimples, as she walked behind the hut.
The four youths looked at each other, just mumbling that it couldn’t be, until one of them left his spot in the hut and skulked away after the girl, followed by his three friends. There they saw her, already naked, illuminated by the lantern’s glow.
“This is for you,” she said awkwardly. “Let’s do it.”
At first, that invitation sounded as incomprehensible as a magic incantation. The boys just stood there, huddled close to one another, shivering. It was the youth with the most initiative, shall we say, who was the first to realize his body was heating up. His hands stretched out towards the girl, fondling her breasts. Then he began taking off his own clothes. Calmly, he led her behind the pandan bushes, laid her down there, and tore her. Not long after that, the other three took their turn, and then Dimples waddled home with her legs wide apart.
“Better I’m a whore,” she said to herself two nights later, not long after that man proclaimed his three talaq, one after another. She left the room carrying a bundle of clothes, not saying goodbye to the man who was pacing back and forth, infuriated, nor to the woman and her two snot-nosed kids, who were gloating in victory. She stumbled through town with a pain between her thighs. There was no home to go to, because none of the doors of the village would receive her ever again—not even at her father’s house.
So, she went elsewhere. She knew that this fate was nothing compared to having to steal anyone’s husband, nothing compared to having to marry that foul-smelling man, but she still could not stop sadness from cascading over her. And if one night you see a black shadow dancing on the mountaintop, that is Dimples, because one evening soon after that she ran off and married a sliver of the moon.
THE STONE’S STORY
It was a hunk of stone, as big as a baby’s head, nothing more. Even so, it wished people would show it some respect and was quite offended at the careless treatment it often received.
One event in particular was lodged in its memory, since the most painful memories are always the easiest to remember. It happened one afternoon—The Stone had forgotten the day and the year, but it would never forget the details, and of course it would never forget the individual who had made it feel so degraded.
This is what came to pass that afternoon: a man dragged a dying woman to the riverbank and then rolled her into a boat. In addition to her, it turned out the man was also carrying a chunk of rock from the side of the road—yup, it was The Stone! He rowed out to the middle of the river and tied The Stone to the dying woman. Th
en, predictably, he dumped the body into the river. The Stone, whose fate had left it unable to swim, swiftly plunged down to the riverbed, dragging the woman along with it. They were both submerged in a huge blob of mud. It didn’t take very long for the dying woman to give up the ghost—she didn’t even have the strength to struggle.
The Stone felt disgraced and unclean. It memorized the man’s face. It vowed, on the river and on the dead woman’s corpse, that one day it would get its revenge. It would settle the score.
They picked up The Stone a few days later. It’s not worth going into how they found the woman’s corpse—obviously one morning they gathered on the riverbank and a few people went diving. And The Stone was raised to the surface along with the dead body.
On seeing the man, The Stone yelled, “That’s the killer! That’s the killer! That man murdered this woman by drowning her while she was dying!”
But no one heard The Stone’s screams. Humans had never learned how to listen to stones, let alone understand stone language. All they knew about stones was that they could be used to sink a corpse in a river or some other body of water.
The man was left free. He even shed tears when he saw the dead woman, and the only reason he didn’t throw himself on her corpse, which was already pale and torn apart, was because others held him back. He seemed like the saddest man in the world.
“Bastard! Liar! He’s not sad at all! He murdered her, I witnessed everything!”
Even though it knew they couldn’t hear its voice, The Stone kept shouting, kept accusing the murderer, until they zipped the dead woman up in a body bag and loaded her into an ambulance. The man left in the ambulance too, and the others followed. Only a few detectives remained, measuring and making notes here and there before they too departed, leaving The Stone with its stubborn fury.
“If humankind cannot uphold justice,” it said, practically snarling, “then I will be the one to do it.”
Bob Dylan said that wandering aimless, not knowing exactly where to go and never feeling quite at home was like being a rolling stone. The Stone itself had overheard Bob singing that song—maybe the music had been faint, coming out of the headphones of a jogger running through the park, not far from the river where it was lying in a heap. Ah, it thought, what do you know about a rolling stone, Bob? Look at me, all I can do is dream of rolling, even a little bit!
Of course, it often wished it could roll, just like it often wished it could swim. If it could swim, maybe that woman could have been saved. Or, even if she couldn’t have been saved, at least it wouldn’t have had to remain there helplessly by her corpse, buried in the mud for days. And if it could roll, it could have chased the killer. But The Stone wished for more than that. It wished it could fly like a bird—it would have flown towards the killer’s skull and it was sure that with its weight and size (about as big as a baby’s head, as stated) that would have been quite sufficient to send the man to Hell.
But, once again, all it could do about any of that was dream. Bob didn’t know anything about stones. Being able to roll would be the most beautiful thing any stone could ever hope to experience, believe me.
Even in its sorry state, The Stone still felt certain it would see that man again.
“I’m going to get revenge for everything he did to me—for making me an accomplice to a vile murder.”
Like all stones, it was incredibly patient. When it came to waiting, it was tenacious and tough. Many things had already happened in its life—although, considering it was a stone, “many things” may sound a bit exaggerated. Even so, it had one purpose in life: find that man. If fate willed it to be crushed into grains of sand, it would acquiesce, as long as it could exact a fitting revenge against the killer.
It didn’t stay on that riverbank forever. Once, a truck driver needed a big rock to wedge under one of his wheels on a nearby incline. Then he decided to take The Stone with him, in case he came across another hill and needed to chock the truck’s wheel again. When he reached the depot, the driver got rid of it.
To repeat, many things had happened to The Stone in its lifetime. After weighing down a body being drowned and then chocking a truck wheel, it propped up a big flowerpot that had lost one of its legs. A pair of mischievous lovebirds graffitied their names all over it. A tired old man, out looking for his wife who had left him eleven weeks earlier, sat on it. Its life was long. It had way too many experiences to be able to recount them all here.
But one thing was clear, the farther it wandered, the more worried it became that the chances of ever meeting that killer again were growing slimmer and slimmer. Even so, it knuckled under to find out where he was. That was no easy task, but it wasn’t impossible. People love to talk to one another and so, as long as it was in contact with people, there was a possibility it would hear about the killer.
“After so many years, he is still sad about his wife’s death. They never found her killer.” That was what it might hear someone say.
And after hearing that, it would shout: “Lies!”
Geologists have long understood that a chunk of stone can hold clues to the long history of civilization. They are always looking for new tales, seeking to uncover new mysteries hidden in hunks or layers of rock. Never look down on a stone, because the story of someone’s life might be etched into its surface.
Look how people have carved into stones, hoping to record certain aspects of their stories. A stone might be silent, vain, and foolish, but even in its silence, it keeps track of many things—and, yeah, of course, it thinks about many things.
The Stone, as it has come to be known here, kept thinking about the killer. Its desire for revenge never abated. But how could it get its revenge? How could it make the man suffer the indignity it had suffered? Wasn’t it true that it couldn’t even roll? Wasn’t its life way more pathetic than what Bob Dylan had imagined?
But it kept on scheming anyway. It was sure that someday it would find itself by the side of the road and the man would approach, driving his car 110 km per hour. One of his wheels would hit The Stone and the car would be lifted up, sent flying, and hurled onto the asphalt. The man would be thrown through the broken windshield and land in an irrigation ditch, his head leaking blood and his brains splattered everywhere. That was the most fitting death for a killer. The Stone was certain it could make the man suffer something like that.
Or, maybe, it could be that there would be a woman, another scorned woman, and she would take The Stone and smash it into the man’s skull while he lay sleeping, and that little collision would be enough to put an end to this story.
There were lots of ways to make the killer suffer what The Stone had suffered. All it had to do was be patient—just wait, as befitted a lump of rock. A stone could live for centuries, far surpassing the brief stint on Earth of a human life.
“That man said no one murdered his wife. She threw herself into the river after tying herself to a stone. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s that stone’s fault.”
“Slander!” The Stone shouted. It felt like a fire pit, glowing red hot.
After meeting all sorts of people, The Stone began to understand what had really happened between the killer and the dying woman. Once again, people love to talk and tell stories—fundamentally there is nothing that is truly a secret between humans. The Stone just needed to listen and, if it was diligent, it would find the truth.
The man had killed the woman, who was his wife, because he had fallen in love someone else. Ah, yes, it was as simple as that. Why didn’t the man just divorce his wife? The Stone didn’t understand that part, but there were things that a stone didn’t need to understand. All it needed to know was that the man had debased it, made it an accomplice to a murder. The Stone had been humiliated and needed to settle the score.
Many years had passed, and The Stone still harbored hopes of meeting that man again. It was no longer the size of a baby’s head. Many things had changed in its life, although maybe “many” sounds a bit excessive for a hunk of
rock.
Because of its old age, the nudge of a truck wheel felt like a wallop and split it in two. It parted ways with its kin. The other half decided to start a new life with new memories, which meant the piece of stone that was left behind harbored the revenge. The wind eroded it, water wore it away. Larger stones crashed into it, and once a hammer almost smashed it to smithereens.
Now it was only as large as a marble, and it tried not to be overcome by a feeling of defeat. Then, one glorious afternoon, a small child picked it up. From inside the child’s grasp, it felt itself being swiftly carried away. Then, the child stopped running and exclaimed, “Daddy, daddy, look I found a stone!”
The child opened its fist, and there in front of The Stone stood the man. His skin was wrinkled, his hair was gray, and he was starting to stoop.
This is my chance, my only chance, to kill him. Now I will get my revenge for the death of his wife, The Stone vowed.
His second wife, who had made him get rid of the first, was much younger. Even though he had aged over the years, the woman still looked shiny and new—being forty years old seemed to mean nothing to her.
That night, the woman saw a stone as big as a marble had been set on the table. She picked it up, contemplated it for a long time, and then placed it on the ground, close to the bed. The writing was on the wall for that old killer. He woke up, got out of bed, stepped on that round stone shaped like a marble, and slipped. His head slammed into the corner of the bed, which was made from fine mahogany, before he hit the floor. His skull split open, spilling his brains.
The Stone saw the smile on the woman’s lips, how her eyes were shining.
A while after that, The Stone overheard someone, who looked to be a household servant, saying, “Well, of course, you know the mistress has been waiting for the old guy to die for a long time now, right? She wants to go live with that young guy, the painter who stops by every once in a while. Now she doesn’t just get her painter, but the old guy’s entire inheritance and his life insurance. Swear to God, she should thank that little stone.”
Kitchen Curse Page 8